Elizabeth Gogoi has become a pawn in the fight between Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and his bete noire, Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi.First, BJP national spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia on Wednesday alleged that Elizabeth, a British citizen who is Gogoi’s wife, has links with Pakistan and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Sarma took the attack further with a series of posts on X on Thursday. Without mentioning the names of the Gogoi couple, he said she had worked for an American senator known for close ties with the Pakistani establishment and later spent time in Pakistan, employed by an organization widely believed to be a front for the ISI. Sarma mentioned that Pakistani High Commissioner to India, Abdul Basit, had invited Gogoi in 2015, then a first-time MP, and his startup, Policy for Youth, to discuss India-Pakistan relations at the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi. He also said Gogoi raised sensitive questions on defence matters in Parliament after his marriage to Elizabeth.Observers saw politics in Sarma’s attack on the Congress MP considering that Assam will go to the polls early next year. There is a perception that the BJP, which has been in power in Assam since 2016, has a serious problem in upper Assam. The party got a whiff of it when it could not defeat Gogoi in the Jorhat seat despite going all guns blazing in last year’s Lok Sabha elections.
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